Generally, on a paper sheet such as a banknote, a check, a draft, a coupon, etc., identification information that uniquely specifies the paper sheet for recognizing the paper sheet is described.
In recent years, in a financial institute, for example, there has been known a paper sheet management apparatus such as a banknote management apparatus that recognizes a serial number (characters) from a banknote, and registers the recognized serial number in a database, so as to manage banknotes handled by the financial institution (see, Patent Document 1, for example).
In addition, in foreign countries, since there are a lot of complaints that a counterfeit note has been dispensed from an automatic teller machine (hereinafter referred to simply as “ATM”) of a financial institution, the financial institution is required to manage banknotes based on serial numbers so as to know whether the counterfeit note is a banknote that has been actually handled by the financial institution.
The financial institution can respond to a complaint that a counterfeit note has been dispensed therefrom in the following manner. A serial number of the banknote (counterfeit note) is inputted as information to be searched, and the serial number to be searched is searched from a database, so as to recognize whether or not the banknote having the serial number is a banknote that has been handled by the financial institute in the past.
However, in the above conventional paper sheet management apparatus, when a serial number of predetermined digits is recognized from a banknote, it often occurs that the serial number on the banknote surface cannot be recognized, depending on a condition of the banknote such as stains on the banknote surface.
In addition, when the paper sheet management apparatus recognizes serial numbers of respective banknotes and simply registers, in a database, a serial number including a character which cannot be recognized as a character (unrecognizable character), as well as recognized serial numbers, a memory capacity of the database is uselessly used.
Thus, in the paper sheet management apparatus, a serial number including an unrecognizable character is inputted by a user, so as to register the inputted serial number in the database. As a result, useless registration of serial numbers in the database can be avoided.
Patent Document 1: JP2004-213559A